The automated drawings are a series of works that were born out of being in the studio. The title of the series could be interpreted as a nod to the "automatic drawings" made by the surrealists.
Often when I’m creating serial works, I make different series at the same time. For example, when I was working on ‘Death Imitates Language’ I was making drawings, too. In the case of these, they came about when I would have certain small ideas, formal explorations, I suppose it would be best to call them. I would get started on them, and just seeing them on the screen or printed by a laser printer seemed to leave them a little flat and lifeless to me, not dynamic enough. I wanted to make them a bit more ‘live’, and, so, ironically, I introduced a machinic dimension.
I would set up a plotter that would begin drawing with a ballpoint pen, and then I would interfere in the drawing process. Sometimes I would pull out the pen or change the pen in the plotter as it was moving. It resulted in some very interesting effects. I particularly liked cases when, for instance, there would be horizontal line, and then a vertical line, and the movement of the plotter would displace the ink that hadn’t dried in the previous line. This created pleasant, unexpected painterly qualities. In a way, these are quite classical works, concerned with form and the temporal dimension - they take a lot of time to create which allows me to get bored and experiment with the process. They are something like classical cyborg art works.
Works in this series were part of the exhibitions Context Switch and Pattern and Presence.